BDS LIES when it calls our brave IDF soldiers “war criminals.”

14 international former chiefs of
staff and senior military officers reviewed the 2014 Gaza conflict from both
the IDF and Hamas operations.

They visited Israel both during
and after the conflict. They interviewed soldiers from the regular
foot-soldiers to unit commanders all the way up to the highest ranks of the
IDF. In their fact finding missions they also spoke with military intelligence
personnel.

While conducting in-depth analysis
into Operation Protective Edge they received unprecedented access to the IDF
and to government officials up to the Prime Minister that, together with their
impeccable military expertise, enabled them to produce a fair and factual
report which they released in early December 2015.

They began by admitting that
Israel’s military efforts were entirely necessary and justified in the defense
of Israel’s national security as a result of the aggressive and offensive
operations conducted against Israeli civilian centers by Hamas and their other
terror affiliates in support of Palestinian Hamas actions initiated against
Israel.

Their conclusions solidly stated that “Israel’s conduct in the 2014 Gaza Conflict met and in some respects
exceeded the highest standards we set for our own nation’s military.”

They went on, “It is our view that Israel fought an exemplary campaign, adequately
conceived with appropriately limited objectives, displaying both a very high
level of operational capability as well as a total commitment to the Laws of
Armed Conflict.”

To emphasize the point, the report
states, “The IDF not only met its obligations under the Law of
Armed Conflict, but often exceeded these on the battlefield at significant
tactical costs, as well as in the humanitarian relief efforts that accompanied
its operation.”

Additionally highlighting the
conduct of the IDF and the Israeli soldier the report recorded that, “Where the high standards of conduct the IDF sets for its personnel have
not been met incidents are investigated, including criminal investigations,
through an independent mechanism under the oversight of the democratic
institutions of the State of Israel. This mechanism clearly meets the
requirements of legal recourse, judicial independence and democratic oversight
that our own nations set for ourselves.”

The team of overseas military
experts reported on Hamas thus,

“Hamas not only
flagrantly disregarded the Law of Armed Conflict as a matter of course as part
of its terrorist-army hybrid strategic concept, but rather it abused the very
protections afforded by the law for military advantage. It embedded its entire
military machinery in civilian locations and sensitive sites, including those
of the United Nations.

Hamas indiscriminately
targeted Israeli civilians throughout the conflict with extensive rocket fire
and willfully sought to draw the IDF into battle in a prepared urban stronghold
amid the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, for which it located its
operational headquarters in Gaza’s main hospital.”

All these are war crimes.

The notable military staffers who
researched and investigated the conflict included;

Colonel Richard Kemp; Former Commander
of British Forces in Afghanistan. He also served in Iraq, the Balkans, South
Asia and Northern Ireland. He led the international terrorism team at the UK’s
Joint Intelligence Committee and served as Chairman of the strategic
intelligence group for COBRA, UK’s national crisis management committee.

General Klaus Dieter Naumann;
Former Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces and served as Chairman of the
NATO Military Committee from 1996 to 1999.

General Vincenzo Camporini; Former
Italian Chief of Defense. He later served as Chief of Staff of the Italian Air
Force as well as Chief of Defense General Staff.

Lt. General David A. Deptula;
Former three-star general in the US Air Force. He was the principal attack
planner for the Desert Storm coalition air campaign in 1991 and served as
Director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Afghanistan and as first
Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance at Air
Force Headquarters.

Admiral Jose Maria Teran; Serves
in the Office of Strategic Assessment of the Spanish Defense Minister and
Former Chief of Joint Staff and Chief of the Strategic Analysis Group.

Major-General Andrew James Molan
served as the Chief of Operations for the HQ Multinational Force in Iraq.
Former Commander of the Australian Defense College.

Other top military leaders in the
High Level International Military Group came from India, France and Columbia.

Lost in the malediction of cynical
media misreporting and malevolent anti-Israel propaganda disguised as
Palestinian human rights concerns is the fact that, during fifty days of war,
Palestinian fired 4,564 rockets at Israeli civilian targets. Despite the UN
statistics, which were adopted lies provided by the Palestinian Ministry of
Health, a de factor Hamas Gaza, the real Gazan casualty figures show that 60%
were men of fighting age, that many of the “children” quoted in
the false figures were actually men in their 20s, that many Gazans were killed
by Palestinian rockets aimed at Israel short-falling within Gaza and there is
video evidence of Hamas conducting public executions of non-compliant
Palestinians.

My investigations into Gaza casualty figures, conducted while the conflict was taking place and in the months
after, confirmed the findings of these fourteen military experts that the Gaza casualty figures were remarkably low when taking into consideration the
intensity of the fighting in such a densely populated area.

Consider this scenario. The
Israeli Air Force conducted over 5000 sorties over Gaza, IDF artillery mapped
out and targeted large concentrations of terrorist activity throughout the Gaza
Strip, tanks softened up intense areas of terrorist strongholds in urban areas
in preparation for the entry of thousands of infantry soldiers who were forced
to destroy booby-trapped buildings alleyways and uncover and destroy miles of
terror tunnels, rocket sites, and weapon storage facilities as well as fighting
civilian-attired terrorists coming out of houses and public buildings to attack
them. And yet there were only a few hundred non-combatants killed in such a
ferocious and prolonged firefight.

As the international experts
reported, this feat was achieved by both the accuracy of the surgical strikes
of all elements of Israel’s fighting force combined with the IDF humanitarian
concern to avoid, as much as militarily possible, harming innocent civilians,
even those in support of the Palestinian Hamas offensive against Israel.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate
for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.’www.barrysbooks.info